It’s fairly common to watch a game these days, see a pitcher throw 99 mph, and hear the reaction of fans be a mix of amazement and fear: amazement that certain pitchers can throw that hard, and fear that it’s unsafe and an injury is guaranteed. Given the many misconceptions and unknowns related to v...
With increasing accessibility to tools such as Rapsodo, Trackman, and Flightscope at all levels of the game, spin rate and spin axis have largely dominated much of the recent conversation revolving around pitch design and repertoire development. This greater emphasis should come as no surprise given...
The bench press is one of the most widely debated exercises in the world of training baseball players, specifically pitchers. Despite the debate, not only is the bench press part of our assessment process but also some pressing variation is included in almost all of our athletes’ programs, to some e...
At Driveline, we implement player-development systems based around metrics that will ultimately optimize performance. For example, from a pitching standpoint we work on developing velocity, designing pitches, and maximizing recovery, among other systems. This intuitive, multi-faceted approach is alr...
Individualization is seen as a must have with training programs. While this is good, it doesn’t come without some misunderstandings. We’ve touched on some of those issues before, but it sometimes seems like people get confused by what individualization means in relation to sports. At times, individu...
Though controversial pulldowns are a staple of our off-season program, we see them as vital pieces to train athletes to handle the stresses of pitching. But, like everything, they can be misunderstood when not done in the proper context. The What Pulldowns, otherwise known as Running Throws, Crow Ho...
This article was written by former Driveline trainer and current Lake Erie Head Coach Cam Castro. Cam details how to track different pitching metrics at small college level to help pitchers develop. (Twitter: @Castro_Turf) When I worked at Driveline, I was spoiled. Trackman, Rapsodo, Motus, biomecha...
This summer we saw 250+ pitchers in our gym from May to September. Of those, we have 152 pitchers to compare pre- and post-bullpen velocity and motus sleeve data to see the effects of weighted-ball training. The first day athletes were in the facility they were asked to throw five fastballs off a mo...
We have been using the motusBASEBALL Sensor to great success over the last year, and it has been able to bring biomechanics measurement from the lab to the amatuer coach and player. Because of our success using the motusBASEBALL Sensor, we felt it would be helpful to provide some more information on...
Let us start by recalling an earlier blog post about efficient front leg mechanics and what they do for the throwing motion, and velocity. In this post, we talk about how the front leg has the job of “slamming on the breaks” [1] and stopping the momentum of the body allowing for maximal momentum tra...
